Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - Oct 03 09

In this issue of Media Literacy Digest, open education advocate George Siemens, explores and reports on new fascinating stories and insights converging around communication technologies and their impact on learning, work and society.

Heading To Athabasca University

I have enjoyed working at U of M - particularly with Peter Tittenberger, Director of Learning Technologies Centre, one of the most creative / innovative leaders I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

When presented with an opportunity to work with Terry Anderson, Jon Dron, Rory McGreal, Griff Richards, and others (I do not think I will be working directly with Debra Hoven, but will enjoy the conversations, I am sure!), the prospect of fertile soil for innovation and discussion is too great to resist!

I will post more about position details and work tasks soon, but at this stage, my work will be positioned with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute and the broader university community in developing a virtual media lab.

In addition to planning a November 1 start date at Athabasca, I have a somewhat hectic speaking schedule for the rest of fall (Portugal, Vancouver, Norway, Barcelona, Toronto, New Zealand).

I believe we are at an exciting time in higher education, where new technologies, new pedagogies, and even new institutional structures, will converge to produce an unprecedented period of innovation in learning and learning sciences.

Social Learning Presentations

A total of 18 presentations are available, addressing a variety of technologies, concepts, and frameworks for social learning. Some level of narration would be a helpful addition, but overall, a good resource to introduce technologically-mediated social learning.

"What is interesting here is that it used to be that you could count on your in-person audience to be singletasking (is that a word?) and paying attention. Now, they are going to be multitasking just like your online audience."

Perhaps I spend too much time online, but I would like to do with the physical world (and conversations) what I do online:

tag,

sort,

annotate,

organize,

archive (the internet of things?).

Overlaying a data layer on the physical world - such as walking through a historical district and being able to see buildings on your mobile device as they looked 100 years ago - contributes to physical / virtual blurring.

I will take it a step further: The biggest challenge facing technologists today is to provide a seamless method of integrating our online selves and our physical selves. I would argue the two separate selves should not even exist - they will converge into one entity.

Universities and Research

Most research in universities is not commercialized. For that matter, most likely cannot be commercialized due to specialized nature of inquiry.

However, according to TC, entrepreneurs should explore the "motherlode of innovation hidden in the huge stacks of patents and discoveries backlogged at our universities and research labs".

Universities are attempting to take control of commercializing their own research.Specialized departments have been set up in larger universities to facilitate this task (and, in many cases, revenues from commercialization activities are growing as a percentage of overall funding).

By design, however, higher education is not equipped to function at the speed (or for that matter, the priorities) of business.

I am concerned that a revenue generation focus will cause universities to lose focus of the broader (philosophic / social / exploratory) they play in societies.

Do all aspects of society - health care, education, even government - need to converge on a corporate/business model? If so, where will we find the important counter balance to ensure one model does not come to dominate completely?